A Dataflow Based Approach to Convergent Uses of Internet-Based Information Resources

It is often required to integrate dispersed Internet-based information resources together on the fly, which do not come along uniformly. To place them into well-formed structures, a dataflow based approach is proposed. Firstly, a metadata model is introduced to represent complex data embodying variable information resources. Secondly, a visual paradigm, which is a hybrid of data flow and XML schema mapping, is proposed to enable users to define personalized flow for information convergence. The multi-sources data flow can generate a collection of unified XML documents in a just-in-time manner and publish them as Web services or XML files, allowing other applications to access them through http or soap protocol. Finally, a proof-of-concept prototype is developed and tested to demonstrate the utility of the proposed approach.